User blog:RRabbit42/Disney Infinity buying guide
This is an article I wrote for issue 101 the Tri-State Gazette, the newsletter of the Phineas and Ferb Wiki. Though I knew about Disney Infinity for a while because it would feature Phineas and Perry in the future, I hadn't really paid much attention to it until recently. And when I did, I found out how much attention you do have to pay when figuring out what to buy. Though the members of this wiki may already know some or most of this, there may be others that are brand new to the game, and with how much money everyone is going to sink into this game, any amount of info should help. I don't play games much any more and only the only system I have right now is a Nintendo DS. But I'm impressed with Infinity enough that I am already planning on buying one of the major consoles before the end of the year just so I can play this one game. I have updated the article slightly and tried to re-use pictures that are already present here, so it will look just a little bit different than it was originally published. ---- Later this month, Disney will begin releasing "Wave 2" of the individual characters and Play Sets for the Disney Infinity game, which all of the packaging refers to as "Series 2", and later there will be a Wave 3/Series 3. Because this is not just a video game but a video game with collectable pieces that have different capabilities, it can be confusing exactly where you can buy each item and what the best deal might be. I am going to take a shot at trying to clear up that confusion. In my area, there are seven places you can buy Disney Infinity items: Best Buy, Disney Store, GameStop, Target, Toys R Us and Walmart. I also took a look at Amazon and Costco's websites. Your area may have other retailers where you can find these, such as JB Hi-Fi in Australia. All prices listed are in U.S. dollars and were rounded to the nearest dollar. In general, the prices are pretty consistent from retailer to retailer, which seems to be standard practice for products like this. The manufacturer sets the price and the retailers can't deviate much from that. For example, all 7 places sell the Starter Kit for $75 regardless of which system. Online is a mostly a little cheaper. Target's website has them for $68 each, and Toys R Us was running a sale where they were $60 each in the store and online, then that was followed by a "buy 1, get one for 40% off sale", but both sales have now ended. Walmart's online prices were about $60 for four of them, but the Wii U version was higher at $80. Add in the promotion Subway is running this month where if you buy a Fresh Fit Meal, you can get a code that is good for $5 off a Starter Pack at Walmart, and you start to get an idea of how complex buying this game and its accessories can be. Now let's make it even more complex. The game is slightly different for the Nintendo Wii and Wii U, with a few areas missing, and there's even a few items that are different between the Wii version and the Wii U version. Plus, the Nintendo 3DS version is way different in that you can only put one character on the Base and is more of a party game for up to four players. But all of the versions have a Toy Box mode that lets you build a play set, with lots of different bits and pieces, kind of like how if you had several Lego sets you could mix those blocks together and come up with something new. The Nintendo 3DS version of the Starter Kit is just the Toy Box mode. (December 2013 update: Amazon has a bundle available that can save you a significant amount of money if you are getting started. The information has been added to the end of this article.) You see Jack Skellington over there? Well, through Monday, October 28th, he can only be bought from GameStop for $14. The next day, that exclusion ends and you can buy him everywhere else for $13, with Best Buy coming in at $14. Those prices are consistent for all of the other individual characters currently available: Mike Wazowski, Randall Boggs, Mrs. Incredible, Dash, Violet, Syndrome, Captain Barbosa, Davy Jones (no, not our Davy), Mater and Francesco. Later this year, we'll see Woody, Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope Van Schweet, and sometime in 2014 will come Phineas, Perry and Rapunzel from Tangled. There are other exclusive releases: You can get Jack Skellington in a customized display case from GameStop on October 15th for $18. Toys R Us has a Crystal version of Lightning McQueen for $15. And if you're a member of Disney's D23 club, you can get the Mickey Mouse Sorcerer's Apprentice figure. I don't know what the original cost is for members, but someone is selling one on Amazon for $290 that's a limited edition out of 5,000 made prior to the game's release in August. We'll have to wait until 2014 before it becomes available in the stores. GameStop also had a special event this past Saturday where the first 50 customers in their stores who bought a Disney Infinity item got a poster of Jack Skellington riding on a red hover surfboard with the "i" logo from The Incredibles. They called that "Infinity Day". If you go in, they probably will still have some of the promo sheets that shows this and all of the other DI items they have for sale. I had also picked up a few weeks before a little "Game Mini Mag!" that was free, which showed what the game is like, provided checklists of the figures and power discs, and a couple of puzzles. The Starter Kits give you Sully, Jack Sparrow and Mr. Incredible with game worlds for Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Incredibles. You can supplement the game with play sets for Cars and The Lone Ranger at $35 each. The two figures you can see in each box are not sold separately, and in between them is the crystal figure that adds new game worlds to play in. You remember that the Wii versions are different? Here's another difference: two sections in the Cars world are exclusive to the Wii and Wii U. You're not going to get them on the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. Disney is also making character packs available. Sidekicks on top and Villains below, both at $30. Buy this and you save $9 or $12 over the three characters individually. In general, prices at Best Buy and GameStop are slightly higher than the other stores for all of the items, but it's usually just a dollar for the small items or $5 for the bigger products. Again, these are rounded dollar values. Future releases will include a Toy Story Play Set with Buzz, Jessie and a crystal version of Buzz's spaceship that adds a Toy Story game, and a "Toy Box" set for the upcoming movie Frozen that includes Anna, Elsa and two power discs. If that doesn't include snowball fights, I will be really disappointed. For those who don't have one of the gaming consoles, there's a couple of other options for playing. You can get a free Toy Box program for the iPad, with a Windows version due out next month. This lets you build your own worlds and the description says you can "sync with the console" to unlock more items, but the picture for this shows a DI Base with two spots to put figures, so I'm not sure if "console" means just the Nintendo 3DS Starter Kit (which only has one spot to put a figure) or if they mean any of the other Starter Kits (which have three spots to put a figure). For the iPad and iPhone, there's another free program called Disney Infinity: Action!. It lets you watch and make animations, and you can use them in your own movies. The last downloadable program is InfiniList Free for Disney Infinity. It lets you keep track of what you bought on your iPhone. Hopefully an iPad version will be out soon, and it would help if someone came out with something similar for Windows. One of the big aspects of this game is that you can buy Power Discs that will add new capabilities. These are sold in "blind bags" of 2 for $5 per bag. You don't know what you'll get. Hexagon discs give you objects to play with, round discs give you special abilities. There's 20 of them in Series 1, with Toys R Us having exclusive packs that have a total of 30 discs you can get. (Note: see the Power Discs page for details on how to tell which disc you're buying when you get the exclusive packs from Toys R Us.) You can use up to 4 discs per character and Disney has even made it so that if you use two of the same disc, you get extra capabilities. That's really helpful because you are going to get repeats when you buy these, so it's not as much of a penalty and less you have to trade with friends to get the ones you want. Series 2 Power Discs will become available on November 26. Most of us will need help figuring out the game, so the $20 Official Game Guide is a must. You can also buy it through the iTunes Store for $10. But if you get the exclusive version from GameStop with the black cover that has Jack Skellington on it, it's the same $20 price but you get a better deal. Both paper versions include a code you can use on the Prima Games website to access an online version of the guide and you can see larger versions of the pictures in the book. I recommend you don't mark up your book, though. Once you register for the website, you can log in to check it from any computer. What makes the GameStop version better is that it includes all of the Wii and Wii U information that the other book doesn't include. If you buy the other book, it directs you to go to the online guide to get that info. The tables that show all the collectable items are also a little easier to read in the GameStop version. Not quite so cramped and they include a spot where you can check off that you got each item. There's a couple of spots where it has some extra artwork that isn't in the regular book, but I noticed that page 201 does not include two "Alert Missions" that are on page 163 of the regular book. Yes, I bought both and I went through and compared them page by page. Amongst the upcoming items is a book called Disney INFINITY: Infinite Possibilities. It's a companion book that describes the characters and the six initial game sets, so that must include the upcoming play set for Toy Story. Amazon and Walmart sell it for $4. That covers what it takes to actually play the game. Now we'll get into storing your game pieces. First, you can buy a pack of three display cases that will hold one figure each for $15. The other option is the Play 'N' Store cases which can fit 3, 4 or 5 characters per case. You get two of those for $20. But if you want to take your game Base and figures with you, you can get the padded Play Zone storage case. When you unfold it, it has a place to set the game Base on and a few spots to set the figures so they will be ready to use in the game. The Play Zone case trimmed in red is available at all stores, but the version trimmed in blue is exclusive to Toys R Us. Both are $40. You are going to be putting characters and power discs on the base and removing them quite frequently. Disney has a clear plastic Base Protector that fits over it for $10 that helps keep it from getting scratched. It includes three different cardboard inserts to spruce it up. I will guess that new inserts will be available as new Play Sets are released, or they'll do the same as with the other items, which is to release a "Series 2" version that includes the plastic cover with the new inserts. Your power discs won't be left unprotected. There is a Power Disc Capsule that holds 22 power discs and includes a round and a hexagonal protective rubber ring for the discs. You use these when you're doubling up the Power Discs on the game base. This is also available in red at all stores and in blue exclusively at Toys R Us, and both are $10. If you want to display the power discs, there is an Album you can buy that has a picture of each of the power discs so you know where to snap each one in. The regular album holds all 20 discs that were released for Series 1 for $10. Toys R Us has one more exclusive item, an album that holds 30 discs (the 20 regular discs plus their 10 exclusive discs). As you can see, the covers are different between the two. The 30-disc album is $20. Not to be outdone, Target already has a listing on their website for the album that they will begin selling on November 19th. It's a Series 2 album and they are including all 20 power discs from that series. It will cost $60, which will be at least a $10 savings: album at $10, plus ten 2-packs at $5 each, and assuming you got very lucky and had no repeats that would cause you to buy at least one other pack to get the one you were missing. Whew! That's a lot of different options and this is quite an expense if you're going to try to get everything. But once you get past the initial cost of the Starter Kit, it's more manageable and you can buy the pieces as you need to at a speed and cost you can handle. In my case, there will be an extra expense of buying the game system to play it on since I don't have any of those yet (just a Nintendo DS, but not a 3DS). With the Playstation 4 and Xbox One due out in a few months, prices on the old systems will drop shortly. Here's a few last notes: * You can buy a 6' USB extension cable for $10 or $15, depending on which store you get it from. It's a high quality cable stamped with the Disney Infinity logo. You can find similar high quality cables for less at stores like Office Depot, OfficeMax or Fry's. * There will be 15 power discs when Series 3 is released. * Walmart has some bundles on their website, but you can skip those. You don't save any money buying items as a bundle instead of just buying the individual items. * Costco has three bundles that will save you about $10 or $20 each. Costco is a warehouse store that requires a membership to buy there. Sam's Club is Walmart's version of this kind of store. * GameStop sells a magazine called GameInformer. Issue 245 from about August described the differences and similarities between Disney Infinity and Skylanders. They concluded that Skylanders has an advantage in having their product out for several years and the old game pieces are still usable with the new sets. But Disney Infinity has the advantage of built-in recognition because everyone knows who Lightning McQueen is and Disney seems to have a clearer plan for this game, stretching out through the next five years. There is going to be much, much more available for the game in the next few years. In just the last two days, I found out that there will be more Crystal versions of different characters, which allows you to gain experience faster and have even better abilities. There will also be new sets like the "Race to Space" with Crystal versions of Lightning McQueen, Buzz Lightyear and two power discs, and a "Wreck-It Ralph" set (Ralph, Vanellope, 2 discs). If you're interested in even more details about Disney Infinity, check out these websites: * The Disney Infinity Wiki * the official Disney Infinity website * News section on the official website, with details about Toy Box challenges where you can design your own Toy Box and submit it. There's a new challenge each week, with the winners are downloadable for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Ninendo Wii U and iPad. The first Toy Boxes available were designed by members of the Disney Infinity team. * Infinity Guru * The Disney Infinity category at VinylmationKingdom.com, with of reviews and articles, such as "The Infinity Effect", which discusses collecting Vinylmation figures and Disney Infinity items. ---- December 15, 2013 update: Amazon has a bundle of the figures for sale that looks like it will only be available for a short time during the holidays. It includes the following: * Violet, Dash, Jack Skellington, Woody, Mater, Francesco and Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey ($13 ea, for a total of $91). * The Villains Pack and the Sidekicks Pack ($30 each). * The Toy Story in Space Playset ($35), Cars Playset ($35) and the Frozen Toy Box ($30). Amazon has it listed for $200, which saves $70 over the list price on the individual items. Though they list "13 characters, two play sets and one toy box", six of those characters are from the Villains and Sidekicks packs, so technically that's another $18 savings over how the bundle is described. If you have bought less than $70 worth of the above items, such as five of the individual figures or one of the sets and two figures, then it would be worth it to buy this even though you're going to get duplicates of what you already have. You'll break even or come out ahead on the cost. You could also wind up saving money if you gave the duplicates as gifts. But if you're already above the $70 mark, it's more cost-effective to buy just the individual items that you need, unless you plan on giving a lot of the duplicates as gifts. I'm in this situation, and since I don't know if any of my relatives have Infinity and therefore which items they would already have, this bundle comes too late for me to take advantage of it. For December 15-21, Toys R Us has the figures on sale at 2 for $18 (you have to buy 2 to get that price), so I can use that to fill in some of what I don't have that's in the Amazon bundle. Category:Blog posts